Soldiers

Chapter 62

The Battle of Epsilon Eridani

Abruptly, Alvaro Soong's command screen registered 221 radio sources, twittering code. He'd been expecting them: a corvette herding 220 spook drones, newly arrived in the Eridani System from Sol. They'd emerged sufficiently nearby that their emergence waves preceded their electromagnetic signature by only a few seconds. The corvette's captain, a lieutenant, had done an excellent job of delivering his herd.

A similar herd had arrived from the Indi System four days earlier and six days late, badly scattered, sixteen spooks short-and on the wrong side of the system. Far enough that the guide ship's signal lag was more then thirteen hours! What a mess. Gathering the spooks had been slow and frustrating, and the fifty-seven hours wasted would be time lost later from steel drills. As for the sixteen spooks lost in hyperspace-an admiral hates losing even unmanned ships.

The Indi guide ship had been a long-range scout, and her commander a mere ensign! Policy required a board of review, which took less than four hours to absolve the young officer of malfeasance. He'd had only introductory training in hyperspace radio-not nearly enough to reliably monitor and control the drones in hyperspace. As for gathering them for the closing jump-that accounted for most of the six-day delay.

The review board concluded he'd done well to lose so few.

Soong savanted a strongly worded message to War House, criticizing Indi Command for appointing someone so unqualified. It was Admiralty Chief Fedor Tischendorf himself who replied, very mildly. Ensign Fahzi had been at the head of his class when Indi Command had pulled him out of training, bestowed a premature commission, and with Kunming's blessing had given him the job. On Indi Prime, everyone of certified competence-short of Command and training staff-had already been sent with the 1st Indi Battle Wing. All they had left were midshipmen.

"Consider yourself well served, Alvaro," Tischendorf had finished. "Ensign Fahzi was the best available, and whatever spooks arrived are ships you wouldn't otherwise have. If he'd lost half of them, you'd still be better off than if they hadn't been sent. And if they hadn't been sent, they'd be meaningless. Because if you don't severely blunt the Wyzhnyny advance at Eridani-and I stress severely-we're lost. All of us."

Soong had listened with chagrin. He'd popped his cork-rare for him-and the indignation that sprayed out had turned to rue. He didn't counter that Indi Command should have held back a qualified officer from the 1st Indi Battle Wing, then transferred him back to it on arrival. Fahzi had done the job. And historically, war was notorious for erroneous planning assumptions, pressure situations, decisions made under severe stress, and the need to use unqualified personnel. In fact, Soong told himself, a perspective review of this war would probably discover fewer and less critical foul-ups than in most historical wars. Because regardless of its other shortages, War House was rich in resourceful ingenuity. Not to mention long centuries of contingency planning and simulation testing.

And no one in War House had joined the military for prestige or benefits.

Now Soong's fleet was fully gathered. Since Shakti, it hadn't grown much in manned fighting ships: his losses had been made up, but he had only a single new battle wing. War House had decided to concentrate on drone production; he had nearly twice as many maces as before.

And now spooks, drones of quite another type. With the 220 from Sol, he totalled 404. Named "Ball Spooks" (for a fabled 21st century gamer and writer), they carried opaque-image generators which could disguise them as battleships, maces or cruisers. Spooks had long been part of science-fiction gaming, and a War House budget proposal for their development had been rejected by the government centuries earlier. Then the Wyzhnyny had come, and industrial and research resources became the limiting factors, with maces and improved shield generators the Admiralty's top development priorities.

And properly so. Maces could kill enemy warships, layered shields could save ships and lives, and definitive research and development had already been done on them. But there was a role for sacrificial lambs-spook ships-that looked enough like lions to fool the enemy and occupy his efforts. So a project was also begun, small and exploratory at first, then more intensive.

When a spook-field generator had been successfully demonstrated, production began, because spooks could be produced quickly in quantities. Prospector hulls would serve, and could be mass-produced cheaply.

Prospector hulls had limited capacity, of course. And while spooks needed no crew facilities, they required lots of hardware, particularly generators of several kinds. Spook-field generators not only required hull space, they made serious energy demands, because ordinary holos were not enough. And of course there could be no skimping on strange-space generators; without them they couldn't travel. But limits could be set for other equipment. A spook without an energy shield would not fool enemy sensors, but their shield generators could be single-layer models, and needn't produce modified topologies.

As for "weapons"… Wyzhnyny shipsminds would be dealing with great volumes of urgent sensory intake, thus spook "war beams" needed only to fluouresce a battleship's shield convincingly. They required far less hull space, and drew far less power than a cruiser's guns, for example. And they carried no torpedoes at all.

Soong had gotten the necessary performance and operating specs in advance, and Charley Gordon had considered them in reprogramming the battlecomps. The Wyzhnyny would face a whole new set of Commonwealth Fleet tactics; the Commos had been sim drilling them for days. Now the Altai's shipsmind uploaded them to the newly arrived spooks from the Sol System.

Extrapolating, shipsmind had provided a probabilistic window of Wyzhnyny arrival. It left only four days for steel drills, then Soong would have to order ready formations, and wait. Wait for the final and decisive fight. If they lost, snooze ships on Terra, Indi Prime, Luneburger's World and Masada, there to load liberation forces, would instead embark women, children, and chosen specialists. None of whom knew yet the great and terrible secret. While cargo ships-so-called colony resettlement ships-loaded selected colonization equipment. They would rendezvous, then seek a new home, half a dozen hyperspace years distant.

But only a tiny fraction of one percent of humankind could be taken. Thus the iron-bound secrecy. The plan was too terrible to become known.

As for the rest of humankind-their future depended on the Battle of Eridani. If it was lost, they were lost. There'd be no opportunity, nor any meaningful force, to make a stand elsewhere.

In reviewing simdrills and coordinating steel drills, Alvaro Soong had occasionally spoken by radio with all his wing commanders. And on his secure, private channel, had twice spoken privately with Carmen Apraxin-DaCosta. Neither had mentioned marriage. This was neither the time nor place to discuss it.

Less than four seconds after his armada emerged, the raucous blare of an alarm horn resounded through the Wyzhnyny flagship. Grand Admiral Tualurog tensed. It was what he'd been hoping for, and he reacted with a mixture of eagerness and anxiety. His command screen showed several sources of technically produced radiation. The main source, very powerful, was the system's second planet, and there were numerous other sources farther outsystem-within an asteroid zone, and in the vicinity of a jovian giant. Their strength and distribution was far larger than in any system encountered since they'd left the Empire. Clearly a core world system-but hardly the crown system. The radio output wasn't that intense.

Also insystem, in the near fringe, was a source array that could only be a space fleet larger than any the armada had encountered before. Though still much smaller than his own. So. Not the Commonwealth's main fleet then. It was simply there to bleed him. That was the human strategy; had been all along.

That moment was pivotal, and even Charley had not foreseen it. For a moment, Tualurog considered generating hyperspace again and speeding onward. Find the human crown system, where their main fleet would be waiting. Defeat it and behead the enemy. But he rejected the idea almost at once. Because the fleet here would undoubtedly pursue him, and with his power advantage, it was better to deal with it now, by itself, rather than later, while engaged with their main fleet.

He voiced an order to shipsmind, and the armada, not greatly dispersed during the approach jump, began forming battle formations.

Alvaro Soong examined the pattern of emergence loci. A few yards away, Charley Gordon sat relaxed at his battle master's station, absorbing the displays on his screen, and no doubt much that was not on the screen. Calmly he began to give orders to shipsmind, the code words measured. Later they'd flow from him quick as pulses from a blaster. And this time he would not wait for the Wyzhnyny to start the fight.

The first strike was by an entire echelon of maces, doing something no one had imagined before: instead of emerging stationary from warpspace, they emerged with momentum-surged forth. There were no organisms aboard to be crushed by inertia, and shipsmind, on Charley's order, had computed an entry velocity the sturdy maces could withstand. At the instant of emergence they began accelerating, generating shields, and achieving target locks for war beams and torpedos.

The Wyzhnyny had generated shields in advance, but still the concentration of fire wrought havoc, and within seconds the maces were deep inside the Wyzhnyny formations. Nor did they pause. A second echelon followed, at the same unexpected speed. And a third. Meanwhile a human battle wing emerged a little distance out, stationary, then accelerated toward the enemy, firing both torpedo salvos and war beams, concentrating on individual targets.

The maces had charged all the way through the Wyzhnyny battle fleet with modest losses, and dropped their shields on the run, the survivors winking into warpspace. And in warpspace, maneuvered promptly into a reverse vector, to emerge again on the fly, ripping through the same formations they'd already savaged.

By then the first-arrived human battle wing had closed with the Wyzhnyny, the two sides fighting in a close-range slugging match. And of course the other wings replicated that behavior elsewhere within the Wyzhnyny battle fleet. In those formations they attacked, less than one Wyzhnyny battleship in three was targeted, but of those targeted, most died. A few survived derelict, their matric taps blown, maintaining life support systems on backups if at all. The human battle groups ignored them, concentrating on ships still dangerous.

This drew the Wyzhnyny reserves, of course. It was their kind of fighting. Their mistake, foreseen by Charley Gordon, was to move cautiously. They'd been fooled too often. Thus the maces reached the dueling field ahead of many of them, sucker-punching and killing Wyzhnyny duelists, winking back into warpspace, then charging out again toward the oncoming Wyzhnyny intervention. And when the maces reemerged, Soong's battle groups used the opportunity to take refuge in warpspace themselves.

They did not stay there long. Warpspace was suitable for covert maneuvering, but poorly suited for actual fighting.

So far, Charley Gordon had not committed his spooks. He knew the circumstances he wanted them for, and it wasn't time yet.

The fighting continued, the Commos repeating the same tactics. Charley would change them when opportunities or difficulties required. In the vicinity of the Altai, the Wyzhnyny had killed nearly a dozen human battleships, and twice as many lesser warships. And that was only one segment of the scene. Comparable scenarios played throughout the battle zone. Wyzhnyny losses were gruesome. The Meadowlands bridge reeked with anxiety. Tualurog had chewed his cheeks bloody, and his eyes bulged wide and wild. This cannot be allowed! Those cursed robots! Sixty-two tribes depend on us! Torpedoes struck her shield, and the Meadowlands jarred. Her lights dimmed, then brightened again. The bridge screens, however, did not blink; shipsminds were powerfully buffered. Damage alarms jangled and systems checks ran. Her shield recovered, and her war beam generator rebooted.

Meanwhile another human battle wing reemerged in the vicinity. Tualurog decided, and barked a command to shipsmind, which passed it on. "All battle groups! All battle groups! This is your grand admiral! Your grand admiral! Do not allow the humans to run away! Choose a target, lock on and close! Attack, pursue and kill! Attack, pursue and kill! Do not be distracted! Do not disengage for any reason! Do not let them generate strange-space again!"

The order sounded on every Wyzhnyny bridge, in every compartment, down every corridor. And whispered in Charley Gordon's mind in the form of an intuition: it was time to call in the spooks. On Charley's order, couriers generated warpspace and radioed the waiting spook groups, which emerged at the edge of action, and received explicit orders via the Altai's shipsmind. Then they winked into warpspace again, to emerge at rendezvous coordinates with battle groups and mace triads.

Meanwhile the battle wings fought in slow motion, to permit maneuver. The maces, with their heavy shields, repeatedly disrupted Wyzhnyny contingents attempting to gang up on Commo battleships. Among the Commo battle groups, patterns of mutual support fluctuated with the need, their fire coordination adjusting constantly to threat and opportunity. And always the key was teamwork.

Most often the spooks mimicked battleships. And because they were less responsive than manned ships, they attracted much more than their share of Wyzhnyny fire.

Mostly the Commos had the advantage of two-layered shields, but not the veteran Altai. She took a heavy torpedo salvo, the energy overload collapsing her shield. Her escort cruisers saved her, two of them deliberately intercepting war beams, breaking their target locks. "Generate warpspace!" Soong snapped, and after a long moment the Altai disappeared, her battlecomp automatically steering an avoidance course "on the other side," against the high probability that more torpedos had been launched at her. They would follow, but the transition would break their target locks, letting them pass into warpspace limbo.

Soong exhaled through rounded lips, half whistling. He had, he realized, very nearly lost both his ship and Charley Gordon.

"Admiral," Charley told him, "the battle vectors have evolved almost ideally. I expect your Commos will get by without us while Engineering repairs our shield generator."

Then he ordered the navcomp to take them to a location in the F-space potentiality, one from which they could emerge outside the battle zone. Meanwhile Soong watched the array of screens, which for the moment showed only systems rundowns.

Engineering required little more than five minutes to replace the Altai's matric tap and breakers. Then she returned to F-space, somewhat removed from the fighting and unnoticed by the enemy. The battle had continued relentlessly. Few of the human ships with single-layer shields still lived, but many with two-layered shields fought on. This time Soong held the Altai clear of the fighting, and Charley began to issue directions to the fleet's battlecomps. Even during the Altai's absence, his battle programs had been decisive. Some of his simdrills and steel drills had assumed the loss of the Altai and her battle master.

Most of the spooks had died, but they'd played a crucial role. Meanwhile the Wyzhnyny could not waltz with the maces, which repeatedly disrupted Wyzhnyny formations and fire coordination. The Meadowlands had been destroyed, and no one had taken command. Tualurog's "attack, pursue and kill" order had hampered teamwork, dispersed formations, and seriously reduced responses to opportunity and threat. Increasingly fragmented, his warfleet simply followed his final order, until teamwork had almost totally unraveled.

Now Charley's main attention was on directing disengaged Commo units to strategic locations. Finally a critical point was reached at which the Wyzhnyny reactions became effectively suicidal, and their warships were overwhelmed.

The battle was over.

Soong remained on the bridge while the names of surviving ships scrolled. He had to know. When the list was complete, the Uinta was not on it. Even then he stayed, while shipsmind extracted and scrolled the identities of Commo ships destroyed.

Finally the Uinta's name appeared. She'd been ruptured and melted down.

When the rundown was complete, he left the bridge, the victor of the most important battle in human history. His back was straight, his head high, and his eyes dry. When he reached his stateroom, he drank himself to sleep.